


Take my Hand and I’ll Hold You to What’s Written There

by Prismabird



Category: The Nice Guys (2016)
Genre: ACOA (Adult Children of Alcoholics), Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Bad Parenting, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Self-Loathing, Sickfic, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-11
Updated: 2016-06-11
Packaged: 2018-07-14 09:23:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7165418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prismabird/pseuds/Prismabird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Holland leaves town for a case, Jackson and Holly end up having a rough night in the hospital. Takes place just less than a year after the events of the first movie, in the early Fall of 1978.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is unrelated to my first fic. I'm still playing in the sandbox with these characters, learning their voice and who they are and so forth, but I think this one is way better than my last, if I do say so myself.

“Be good for your Uncle Jack,” Holland told Holly as he placed his suitcase in the corner and out of the way of the mob of airline travelers. He pressed a kiss to her forehead, and was instantly rewarded with a moody glare and crossed arms. He frowned. “Come on sweetie, don’t I get a hug goodbye?”

The terminals of LAX were, as usual, packed with hoards of sunburned tourists and tired businessmen in crumpled suits spilling their coffee into already stained carpets. The air was hazy and stunk of cigarette smoke, though no one seemed to notice or care. Holland, Jackson, and Holly had pushed their way passed shin-high swinging suitcases and knee-high escaped toddlers into a little empty space near the corner of the window to say their goodbyes.

“You shouldn’t be going alone!” Holly huffed. 

Through the glass behind them, Jackson watched a plane slowly roll into the terminal gate, wobbling a little, struggling to aline itself with the jetway. He wondered if the pilot was drunk, and then wondered if his musings weren’t a little hypocritical, given that he and Holland had just spent an hour bellied up to the Sky High airport bar. 

A few months ago, the two of them had made a pact to abstain from day drinking while working cases, but today Holland was only going up to Berkley to bring back a teenage runaway. “Once or twice a year, her parents give me a tiny fortune to bring her home,” he’d said. “Easy money. She’s always in the same hang outs. I could do this one blitzed, blind, and with one hand behind my back.” So they made an exception. With Holland, there were a lot of exceptions. 

Holly, however, was not so easily convinced. “Honey, how many times have I brought Sarah Wilcox home all by myself?” Holland asked her.

Holly sighed. “Six.”

“And how many time have I gotten hurt doing it?”

“Twice.”

 “You see? Those are pretty good odds.” He gave her another kiss and a tight squeeze. “I’ll be back soon, I promise.” 

 “Pinky?”

“You bet.” Holland hooked fingers with her, then turned to Jackson. “Try not to do anything insane until I get back, man.”

“Who, me? You’re the insanity magnet, not me. My life was normal until I met you.” 

“Not normal, just boring,” Holland corrected him, and he couldn’t really argue.

“Just don’t forget -” Jackson took his hand by the fingers and pulled it up in front of his eyes, forcing Holland to read what Jackson had written there in ball point pen half an hour ago at the bar. _You are not invincible. Don’t do anything stupid._

Holland nodded as if it were a completely normal request, and pulled Jackson into a tight hug. Jackson buried his face for a quick second against Holland’s neck, quelling an urge to kiss him goodbye properly. He could have, he supposed, it wasn’t as if they would draw _that_ much attention, but they both tended to be a little shy with PDAs. Their embarrassment often made Holly roll her eyes (‘get with the times, you guys!’ she’d say), but then, they weren’t young like she was, and while the world kept turning, eventually everyone stopped turning with it. 

“Stay safe,” Jackson said against Holland’s neck. 

“I will.” 

“Call me if you even _think_ there’s gonna be trouble.”

“You too,” Holland said, and let go. 

They stayed, watched him board the plane, Holly waving morosely after him as he walked into the jetway tunnel. Jackson turned to leave then, but per Holly’s insistence he stopped, and instead they waited until Holland’s plane had pulled away and taken off, soaring up up up until it was a tiny speck in the clouds. Once it had finally vanished from view, Jackson turned to her. “You want to get some pizza for dinner?”

* * * * *

Holly was petulant for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening. She hardly said a word on the drive home, and would only shrug when Jackson asked her what she wanted on her pizza, which would have been fine except that she then refused to eat it. “Come on, you like pepperoni,” he said, plopping the greasy cardboard box down on the coffee table, trying to hide his irritation with her. He popped the top off of his beer and sat down on the couch beside her. “I’ve seen you eat half a large all by yourself.”

She poked at the slice on her plate and looked at him distastefully. “I think I’m a vegetarian now,” she said. 

“Then pick it off.”

She didn’t answer, just kept poking. Jackson took a breath and suppressed an inclination to tell her that, when he was a boy, he’d have been smacked into next week for refusing to eat good food. Instead, he said, “You know, your dad’s going to be just fine.”

“Don’t be retarded,” Holly said. “Dad’s never fine.”

“Don’t call your elders retarded,” Jackson countered, taking a pull off his beer. “It’s not ladylike.”

“You’re being sexist. I’m not ladylike, and I don’t have to be.”

He laughed a little at that and shook his head. “No, I guess you don’t. I’m not about to be the man who tries to make you.”

Holly loudly put her plate down on the coffee table and crossed her arms, glaring straight ahead at the TV, as if the cast of Happy Days had personally offended her. 

“Hey, hey, all right, let’s not be like that,” Jackson said, trying to rescue the situation. “Holly? I’m sorry. Look, will you read my palm?” Holly had learned palm reading from one of her school friends the Friday before, and had been going around telling everyone their futures. Jackson wiped the condensation off on his jeans and held out his callused hand to her.

She frowned at him, though some of the acidity had gone out of her glare. “I already did last week, it hasn’t changed.” 

“I forgot what it was. Go on, work your mysticism.”

After a second’s hesitation, she took his hand and regarded it seriously. “Your head line says that you’re a person who prefers action over thinking, and that your job will be more physical than intellectual.”

“I already know that. Do I have a long life line?”

Yup. And look at this.” She pointed to a crease high on his palm. “Your heart line starts out near the middle, kind of faint, and then gets stronger. See? That means you find your true love late in life.”

“That so?” Jackson smiled. 

“Uh huh. You and dad are meant to be.” She grabbed his fingers and pulled his hand closer, laughing a little. “It doesn’t look like you have any children with him, though, sorry.”

 “We’ve got you,” Jackson replied.

She rolled her eyes at him. “Well yeah, but I meant children for you, though, I’m not your kid.” Holly’s grin faded, and she went quiet and looked away. Jackson tried not to look stung. “What I meant was -”

“No, it’s okay,” Jackson said. He cleared his throat, and they went back to silently watching TV, while Holly continued to pick at her slice of pizza.

Happy Days ended, and The Waltons followed. Everyone in the house had lost their taste for that particular show, so Jackson switched off the set and announced that he was going to go research a case, which, at this hour, meant he was going to sit in the office, drink beer, and pretend to look things up until he got too drunk to care about pretense anymore and started reading car and nudie magazines.

“Don’t stay up too late,” he told Holly, who was already half way to her room, no doubt about to blare that awful noise she called music (“It’s Punk,” she’d told him once, or he thought that was what she’d said, though it was difficult to tell with his fingers shoved into his ears). She didn’t reply, so he gave up and, shaking his head, went to the spare room to get started.

* * * * *

The key to being a successful alcoholic, Jackson knew, was adapting a flexible strategy.

 It wasn’t enough to say, “I’ll have just one and go home” the way Holland sometimes did - that wasn’t going to happen. People like them lacked working brakes, which was why Jackson disliked like midday drinking. Once he got started, he found it exceptionally hard, nigh impossible to stop. So he stuck to his plan:

He started with a shot - whiskey, vodka, whatever sounded best that night, it wasn’t important. What was important was that he felt it hit. Not the moment the booze hit his stomach, but the beat after, when the hot burn-kick started to fade, and turn light and good, and seep into someplace right at the core of him, like unlocking a door to his true self which spread outward, outward, outward. It was like catching a wave in the ocean, and Jackson couldn’t think of anything in the world that felt better. 

After that, he usually tried to take it slow - no more than one every thirty minutes, if possible. Tried to stick to beer, which was bad for his fat gut, but better for his hangover. Tried to start as late as possible, to minimize quantity before falling asleep. Tried to stay out of trouble with the law, in fact stay home, avoid human contact, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. 

Tonight, however, Jackson was in a shit mood, which meant fuck the plan. After his double bourbon shot, he drank two beers quick and wished Holland were there. Starting a third - or was it a fifth? He’d had two with dinner - he chided himself for his pity party. This wasn’t about Holland’s absence, or Holly’s moodiness, or anything else besides his own patterns of unease. Experience had taught him that, while he could handle being alone, he could not _stand_ it when people left. 

Experience had taught him that he operated a lot smoother when he never got too close to people in the first place.

He sat on the little twin bed they kept in the office for reasons of plausible deniability about where Jackson slept if one of Holly’s little friends decided to go poking around. It grated, but attracting the attention of strangers was one thing, while suddenly finding out that Holly’s friends weren’t allowed to associate with her anymore would be something else entirely. He ran his hands through his hair. ‘ _Stop putting your bad feelings on the kid,’_ he though to himself. _‘The thirteen year old girl out there is not responsible for your feelings.’_

He thought, _‘I didn’t think like this when I was sober. I didn’t.’_

He thought, _‘I was sober before I met Holland. Alone and sober and unhappy.’_

By the start of his second six pack, Jackson had stopped thinking altogether, and about halfway through it, he fell asleep in the office. His sleep was dreamless and undisturbed until he woke up at 1:50 am to the sound of someone running a bath. 

* * * * *

“Holly?” Jackson called softly as he crept toward the bathroom. “Holly? Are you okay?” He rapped his knuckles on the door. There was no answer. “Holly, I’m going to come in, but I wont look.” He put his hand like a visor to his eyes as he opened the door.

She was dressed, he saw through the cracks in his fingers, and so he removed his hand. The next thing he saw was that she was kneeling down outside of the tub, but with her head hanging over the side, hair dunked under the faucet. No wonder she hadn’t heard him. “Holly!” he called loudly, causing her to startle and bang the back of her head on the tub fixture. 

“Ow! Owowow!” she cried, grabbing the back of her head with both hands. He ran to her and knelt by her side.

 “Sorry!” He took ahold of her temples and looked through her wet hair for any bleeding, but found none. “Look at me,” he ordered her, and she did. Her eyes were glassy and her face flushed, but her pupils looked normal, and so he let her go. “What were you doing?”

“I threw up in my hair,” she said, her voice slightly raspy. 

“In your sleep?”

 “No. Just now. It got in my way.”

“When did you start getting sick?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t feel good all day.” She grasped for some toilet paper and blew her nose, moaning a little. “It came out my nose. I hate that. It burns.”

“When did you start throwing up?”

“Uh, I don’t know. An hour ago?”

“Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“You were sleeping,” Holly said, her head drooping to the side of the tub.

“But why didn’t you _wake me up?”_

“You were drunk,” she answered. There was no accusation in her voice - she stated it like a simple fact of life, you were drunk and therefore useless to me, just like dad, just like always. Jackson reeled. 

“I’m not drunk,” he replied, and instantly felt stupid for arguing with her. Holly, to her credit, didn’t argue back, but then, she always was the mature one in the house. Or perhaps she simply didn’t feel up to continuing the conversation. “You look like you have a fever.” She felt like it too, although it was difficult for Jackson to tell. Sobering up had a way of playing havoc with his own temperature. “Hang on.”

He was back in a moment with the thermometer. She placed it under her tongue, and they waited the required three minutes before he took it back from her, squinting at it. “I can’t read this without my glasses. Can you?”

She did, and her eyes went wide. “Whoa. No way that’s right.”

“What’s it say?”

“103.9.”

“Jesus.” Jackson took a deep breath. “So. Hospital time, right?”

“I don’t want to go anywhere,” Holly mumbled, collapsing against the cool side of the tub. "I'm too tired."

“I know. I’ll get our shoes, wait just a minute.” He came back a few minutes later, shoes and a blanket in tow. “Come on,” he said, wrapping her up in the blanket. “One, two, _three,”_ and on three, he hefted her up into his arms and carried her out to his car.

“Should I drive?” she asked, and his stomach clenched.

“No.”

“What if I throw up in your car?” she mumbled, shoving her face against the window.

 “I don’t care,” Jackson said, and took off toward the nearest hospital.


	2. Chapter 2

By the time they pulled into a parking spot outside of the emergency room, Holly was pale and shivering, hand clutching to her right side. “Hurts,” she murmured over and over again. “Hurts. Hurts.”

“I know, I know,” Jackson replied, struggling to keep the edge out of his voice. “It’s okay now, we’re here.”

Even taking into account the late hour, the parking lot of St. Angelicas was fairly open, at least for an LA hospital on a Saturday, and Jackson thanked every saint he could recall from his Catholic upbringing that they weren’t busy. He took Holly into his arms again - she probably couldn’t have walked right then any more than flown - and carried her through the dark, oil stained lot and into the harsh light of the ER waiting room. 

Waiting had never been Jackson’s forte, but thankfully the triage team took one look at Holly’s ashen complexion and ushered them back to a curtained off gurney, where a hospital aid who looked about a year out of high school (at least, Jackson _hoped_ she was) came in to set up the monitors. “Hi Holly!” she said, in a far-too-cheerful-for-three-am voice as she checked Holly’s vital signs. “Remember me? Strange seeing _you_ in the bed for once.”

“Huh?” asked Jackson.

“Holly usually plays bedside helper for her dad,” the aid told him. “We all know Mr. March here, I think he’s probably broken half of the bones in his body. We’re thinking of making up a loyalty card just for him. Where is your dad, honey?”

“Out of town,” Jackson answered for her. Holly didn’t look especially up to conversation just then. “I’m a friend of his. I’m watching Holly for him. I need to call his motel, is there a phone around here that I could use?”

“After the doctor sees her,” the aid answered. “She needs a guardian in the room with her for that. It’s part of hospital policy when treating a minor that they-”

“Yeah yeah yeah fine, but when will that be?” Jackson asked. The aid just shrugged.

The answer turned out to be, ‘not as long as Jackson feared, but not as soon as he’d hoped.’ Still, less than an hour later, he was on the phone in a little nook of the waiting area. “Holland?”

“Huh?” Holland’s voice was fuzzy, thought Jackson wasn’t sure if it was drunkenness or merely sleep addled. 

“Holland, are you sober?”

A pause. “Define sober.”

“Are you?”

“No.”

Jackson sighed. “Well, get sober in a hurry. I’m in the ER at St. Angelicas with Holly. They’re taking her to surgery in a half an hour.”

“What happened?” Holland’s voice snapped back to sharp in a nanosecond. It wouldn’t last, Jackson knew, so he took full advantage of Holland’s adrenaline rush.

“It’s her appendix. The doctor thinks it might be an emergency, so they’re taking it out as soon as possible. She’s all right for now, they gave her some morphine and she’s sleeping, but you should have seen her... Look, I know you’re in the middle of -”

“I’m on my way,” Holland interrupted. Jackson could hear the creak of cheap bedsprings on the other end, as if Holland had just leaped to his feet. “Tell her I love her and I’ll be there as soon as I possibly can.” 

“I will.” 

“Thanks for taking such good care of her.” A pause. “I love you.”

Jackson swallowed. Those were rare words between them. Never had they felt so unearned. “I love you too.”

* * * * *

They made Jackson wait. He didn’t punch anyone in the throat and considered it a moral victory. 

A hospital volunteer walked him from the waiting area into the recovery unit just as the sun was starting to show on the horizon. When he saw Holly, his legs went weak, and he nearly dropped his coffee. “She’s so pale,” he said. The post op nurse who was fiddling with Holly’s IV fluids looked up.

“She’s coming out of anesthesia,” she told him. “Her color will come back in a little while.”

“She did okay?” he asked. “She’s going to be okay?” The doctor had already talked to Jackson, told him that Holly was doing superb and would be back to her old self in a few days, but he wanted to hear it again. 

“She’ll be fine. Let me know if she wakes up and needs anything for pain.” The nurse handed him a call button and left.

For a while, far too long in Jackson’s opinion, Holly remained unconscious and pale, and he began to wonder if he should call for the nurse. But finally she started to stir. “Hey kid,” he said once she’d opened her eyes. 

It took her a few hoarse tries before she managed to reply. “Hey Uncle Jack,” she said. Jackson raised his eyebrow. Holly never called him that. Her father had tried to get her to for months, but she had deemed it far too old fashioned and babyish, so he remained ‘Jackson,’ or ‘Mr. Healy’ when she was annoyed with him.

“How are you feeling?”

“ ‘m sick.”

“Yeah, I know. But you’re going to get better soon, now that they’ve got that bad appendix out. Does it hurt?”   She shook her head, something else that surprised him - he’d had his own appendix out when he was eleven, and he remembered it being quite painful - when he realized, no, she was shaking her head because he’d misunderstood. “I feel sick,” she said, a slight panic to her voice. “I don’t want to throw up. It’ll hurt too much.”

“I’ll call the nurse,” he said, pushing the call bell. “I got ahold of your dad a little earlier. He’s on his way, and he told me to tell you he loves you, and he’ll be here soon.”

“I wrecked his case.” 

“No you didn’t, don’t worry about that,” Jackson said. “He doesn’t care about the case, he cares about you.”

Jackson had meant for it to be comforting, which is why he felt a rush of panic when Holly’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry,” she sniffled. “Did I throw up in your car?”

“No, sweetheart, you didn’t. Stop worrying about me and your dad, all right? You don’t have to take care of us, I’m here to take care of you.”

Holly pulled the side of her pillow up against her cheek to hide her face, and it took Jackson a moment to realize why. “Sorry,” she sobbed. “Sorry. I’m being a baby...”

“Shhshh, it’s okay, Holly, you’re not - Look, you’ve had a rough night, just try to rest. It’s okay.”

“I want - I want my dad,” she cried, then, to his alarm, “I’m gonna throw up.”

Jackson startled, but did his best not to show it. “Okay, hang on, let’s sit up,” he said, helping her by the shoulders, while simultaneously grasping behind him for blue emesis bag left by the nurse. “Hang on, hang on, there’s a bag,” and he managed to get it to her mouth just in time to catch a jet of bile, and even kept a straight face when a bit of it splashed against his thumb. “There you go,” he said, as she shuddered through a dry heave. “There you go. It’s almost over.”

The nurse came in at that moment, and took one look at Holly who was sobbing, hiccuping, and gagging, and at Jackson, who was holding a bag of vomit, looking lost and bewildered. She calmly said, “Oh, honey. I’ll get you something to help,” and was gone as quickly as she arrived. 

Thankfully, she was back a moment later with a handful of syringes and plastic tubing. By that point, Holly was basically having a meltdown, her face pressed into Jackson’s chest leaving a wet smear across his shirt. “She’s not normally like this,” Jackson said to the nurse. “Something’s wrong.”

“Holly? Holly,” the nurse said, “Listen to me. We’re going to put some oxygen on you, just like this,” and she placed a cannula around Holly’s ears and into her nose, “and then we’re going to give you a shot,” which she did, in the back side of Holly’s hip without warning. “That was for nausea, and the pain medicine is going to go in your IV. Just like this.” She pushed the second medication into Holly’s IV line. “That one works by relaxing all of your muscles and making you feel very caaalm and niiiice.” She dragged out her vowels in a soft, sing-song voice. “Sometimes people come out of surgery with funny oxygen levels, and it makes them feel scared and confused, but it’s going away now, honey.” Against Jackson’s chest, Holly started to go a little slack. He looked up at the nurse, questioning. ‘Valium’ she mouthed to him, and he nodded.

They lowered her back to her pillow. “We’ll keep the oxygen on her while she sleeps and try her off it again later. I’ll let the surgeon know what happened.” The nurse tilted her head at him. “You want me to show you where you can clean up?”

“Huh?” Oh, right. His shirt, and his hand. “I’m not leaving her. Do you have a wet washcloth you could get me?”

“Of course,” she said, leaving them alone again, and Jackson settled into his chair, preparing himself for another long sit, wishing, not for the first time, that he could make Holland appear by sheer force of will.

* * * * *

Jackson couldn’t, as it turned out, but Holland showed up later that morning anyway. By then they had a little room in the Pediatric Medical-Surgical unit, complete with a plasticky recliner for Jackson, where he could try and fail to get some sleep. Much as he appreciated the almost rest, he was getting a little sick of taking the grand hospital tour, and hoped that everyone would stop bugging them and let them stay put for a little while. 

Holland didn’t say anything when he arrived, hardly made a noise at all, but Jackson somehow sensed him anyway and cracked his eyes open. He was standing in the doorway, shirt crumpled, tie shoved into his pocket, unshaven, staring distraughtly down at his daughter laying in the bed. “Let her sleep,” Jackson said quietly, getting to his feet. “They keep waking her up to take her vitals, and she’s exhausted.”

“Is she okay? How is she?” Holland asked, as Jackson pulled him into a tight hug. He kissed him on the mouth and touched his forehead to Holland’s, and even though they both smelled like sour hangover and neither one had brushed their teeth, it didn’t really matter.

“Okay. She’s doing okay. The surgeon said she’ll be right as rain in a few days, and her pain is better, and her fever’s gone, but they’ll have to keep her on fluids until she can keep something down.” Jackson gave Holland a final hard squeeze before letting him go. “You look terrible.”

“Yeah. I’ve been asked not to return to the San Francisco International Airport, by the way.”

“I’m glad you’re here, she was looking for you every time she woke up.”

Holland looked Jackson up and down in a way that made Jackson irrationally defensive, and he took a deep breath to squash the feeling. “What are you not telling me?” Holland asked? “She is okay, right?”

“Yeah,” Jackson said, “Let’s sit down.” He gave Holland the recliner, taking the smaller straight backed chair for himself, and folded his hands, eyes to his shoes. “She didn’t wake me up when she started getting sick.” 

“What do you mean?”

“She was throwing up and running a crazy high fever, but she didn’t come wake me up. I only found out because I heard her running the faucet while she was trying to rinse the vomit out of her hair.” 

“Why didn’t she wake you up?”

“Because I was drunk, and she knew it,” Jackson said.

He looked up then to study Holland’s reaction, and it was about what he’d expected. Holland leaned back in his chair a little and looked up at the ceiling, trying for a casual facade to cover his own defenses, which had just sprung into place. “Don’t beat yourself up. It could have happened to anyone.”

Jackson nodded, as if that were true. “I don’t think she trusts me to take care of her.” 

“That’s silly,” Holland said. “Of course she trusts you.” Us.

The only response Jackson could think of ( _“does she?”_ ) was beyond his bravery. He and Holland spent a silent ten seconds waiting to see which of them would have the courage to say it. Neither of them, as it turned out. Jackson cleared his throat. “Sorry you got pulled off your case. I guess you probably didn’t have enough time to get very far.” 

“Oh, no, I found her.” 

Jackson blinked. “That was quick.” 

“She wasn’t hiding. She was in the first place she knew I’d look.”

“Interesting strategy.” 

“It was, actually. I let her go.”

“What? Why? You said the payoff was a small fortune.”

“Because she finally told me why she was running away from them.” His eyes glanced briefly to his daughter’s sleeping form, then quickly away again. “I didn’t want to believe her, but then she asked me something I’d never thought about before.”

“What was it?” 

“She asked me, ‘Why do you think Dad always calls you and never calls the cops?’”

Jackson reached across the space between them and took Holland’s hand, his fingers brushing the faded words he’d written not twenty-four hours before. _You are not invincible._ Holland sighed. “Anyway, she’ll be all right on her own - she’s seventeen now. God, time flies, man. She was practically Holly’s age the first time I brought her back.” He looked like he might be sick. 

“Dad?”

Holland was up and at Holly’s side in an instant. “Hey sweetie,” he said, crouching by her bed. “How are you feeling?”

Holly shifted listlessly in the bed. “Okay. A little better.” 

“Yeah? Does it hurt a lot?”

“Nah. Not really.”

“That’s my tough girl.” He kissed her cheek. “Jackson told me you went through surgery with nothing but a shot of whiskey and a bullet to bite on, is that true?”

“Is Jackson still here?”

“Right here, kid,” Jackson answered. “Does this mean I’m not Uncle Jack anymore?”

Jackson honestly didn’t think Holly would be capable of sardonic eye rolls after everything she’d just been through, but he should have known better than to question her commitment to teenage cynicism. “I already told you that I’m never calling you that,” she said. “I’m not eight years old, and it’s not the 1950s.”

“My mistake,” he said, holding his hands up in surrender. 

Holland nodded at him. “You can go home and get some rest, if you want. I’ll stay.”

For a moment Jackson contemplated it. Hot shower, soft bed, toothbrush, quiet house. But...maybe a little too quiet. A little too lonely. And before he had met Holland, he _had_ been lonely. Alone, sober, and unhappy. These days, though, these days he was usually none of those things, and in one way that brought him back down to a place he swore he’d never be again. But in other ways - in countless other ways - it lifted him higher than he’d dared hope, and Jackson couldn’t think of anything in the world that felt better.

“I think I’ll stay here with you guys for a while,” he said, pulling a chair around for Holland, and the other for himself so that they could sit together. Holland smiled and took his hand. Which reminded him... “You got a pen?”

Holland fished through his pockets until he came up with a ballpoint, which he gave over to Jackson. Jackson took the pen and twirled it around his free fingers, feeling loved and happy and (for the moment) sober. Squeezing tight to Holland’s fingers, he tipped his head back, closed his eyes, and thought about what he was going to write there next.


End file.
